Marie Antoinette en pièces de théâtre

Ca, pour être romancé, c'est romancé!   

Marie Antoinette: The Color of Flesh

THE STORY: MARIE ANTOINETTE: THE COLOR OF FLESH is a dramatic love triangle set during the turbulent years around the French Revolution. Elisabeth Vigée le Brun, a beautiful, social-climbing portrait painter, uses her affair with Count Alexis de Ligne, a left-leaning philanderer, to get a commission to paint the naive young Queen Marie Antoinette. While Elisa uses the Queen to further her career and Alexis uses the Queen to further his political goals, both learn to love the woman they're exploiting. Elisa becomes the Queen's best friend, and Alexis becomes the Queen's lover. Elisa tries to end the scandalous affair between the Queen and Alexis, both out of concern for the Queen's political position and jealousy over Alexis' love, until the Revolution shatters all three of their lives.
http://www.dramatists.com/cgi-bin/db/single.asp?key=3885

Painting one of history’s most universally reviled figures in a sympathetic light requires a deft hand—a metaphor that plays out quite literally in Shadow Theatre’s production of Marie Antoinette: The Color of Flesh.

“Marie Antoinette is someone who’s painted so black in our history,” says Alana Hawley, who plays a character who truly did paint Antoinette: Élisabeth Vigée le Brun, a peasant girl whose portraits of Antoinette catapulted the young painter to the highest levels of Parisian society.

“If people take the time to actually look into who Marie Antoinette was, she’s not bad; she didn’t know any better,” Hawley explains. “The play represents her as not evil at all; she just didn’t get it, and her innocence is essentially her demise.”

The Color of Flesh outlines a love triangle set during an enormously formative period in history: 20 years leading up to the French Revolution, from 1774 to 1793. Antoinette and le Brun are both lovers of Count Alexis de Ligne, a figure loosely based on a person who may have had an affair with the queen.

“The last thing you would ever call this play is dry,” Hawley says with a laugh. “There’s sex, there’s love, there’s war, there’s envy, there’s balls and parties—there’s everything! It really transcends time. Yes, it’s about things that happened a long time ago, but the issues at hand and the power relationships are just as palpable as in any contemporary play today.”

Joel Gross’s script actually has two different versions: Shadow Theatre is mounting the one-act version, which Hawley describes as gaining “beautiful momentum” without the intermission in the full two-act version.

“The word ‘transformation’ always comes up for me in this play,” Hawley says. “We see the transformation of each of the three characters, and we see the transformation of France, of America, of politics in that time. So because of the change happening in history, this enables the change to occur in the characters.

“Le Brun was notorious for bringing inner beauty to the outside,” Hawley continues. “She was very famous because she made not-so-attractive women appear stunning. From her point of view, she attributed it to the colour of flesh and taking the glow that is inside of a person’s soul and letting that illuminate through the skin in her painting. It really coins the power she had as an artist, to bring someone’s inner beauty to the surface.”

Wed, Jan 29 – Sun, Feb 16 (7:30 pm)
Directed by John Hudson
Varscona Theatre, $11 – $22
http://www.vueweekly.com/marie-antoinette-the-color-of-flesh/

Théâtre. Le Porteur d'histoire, ce jeudi 6 février, à Laval



Ce fut l'un des coups de cœur du festival Off d'Avignon en 2012. C'est ce jeudi soir au Théâtre de Laval.

Le Porteur d'histoire, c'est une cascade d'histoires à l'intérieur d'une même histoire. On y retrouve une cascade de personnages : Alexandre Dumas, Marie-Antoinette, Delacroix... Les cinq comédiens, trois hommes et deux femmes, campent ainsi une trentaine de rôles.

« Le Porteur d'histoire entraîne le spectateur dans une quête effrénée, un périple à travers le temps, explique Amaury de Crayencour, l'un des comédiens de la pièce. On suit ainsi l'histoire de Martin Martin qui, par une nuit pluvieuse, doit enterrer son père au fin fond des Ardennes. Il y découvre des carnets écrits par une femme qui parle d'un trésor. Il part à la recherche de ce trésor... On s'interroge aussi sur la disparition mystérieuse d'une mère et de sa fille dans le désert algérien. Ce spectacle palpitant regorge d'aventures emmêlées. »

Jeudi 6 février, à 20 h 30, au Théâtre de Laval. Tarifs : de 6 € à 22 €.
http://www.ouest-france.fr/theatre-le-porteur-dhistoire-ce-jeudi-6-fevrier-laval-1908085

Un autre article sur ce même spectacle, où nous apprenons que nous entendrons parler non seulement de notre Antoinette, mais aussi du prince de Polignac.

Le porteur d’histoire » invite le spectateur à relire l’histoire, son Histoire, à travers celle de Martin-Martin mais aussi celle d’Alia et de sa fille, d’Alexandre et d’Adélaïde, de Marie-Antoinette ou du prince de Polignac.

Je me demande vraiment ce que c'est que ce truc...   


Pour en savoir plus: http://www.ouest-france.fr/theatre-chateaubriant-le-porteur-dhistoire-au-theatre-de-verre-1913558

Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company Announces 35th Season: MARIE ANTOINETTE, CHEROKEE & More

February 10
11:02 AM
2014


Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company's 35th anniversary season is one of inward and outward revolution, of daring and breakthroughs in style, content, process, and even international borders for the Company's biggest, most ambitious season yet!

The apocryphal quip by Marie Antoinette-"Let them eat cake!"-sparks a deliciously decadent Season 35, but also one in which we skewer our leaders and walk the widening divide between the haves and the have-nots. The cast of characters include queens and presidents, boomers and hustlers, the living and the living dead, and all of the works explore societies and individuals under attack from outside and inside forces, breaking down, breaking out, and groping toward new solutions.

Season 35 begins and ends with two plays about governments under siege: Marie Antoinette by David Adjmi and Zombie: The American, a World Premiere, and Woolly's first "Free the Beast!" commission by Andrew W. Mellon Playwright in Residence Robert O' Hara. Both show conflicted and complicated leaders attempting to keep the hordes at bay, even as rebellion is inevitable.

But if the above present the world from the point of view of those with power, the four works between them present stories of societal attack and change by everyday individuals who struggle to rise up and take down the established order. The Russians Are Coming! A Festival of Radical New Theatre from Moscow showcases new work by four innovative companies using revolutionary and inventive theatrical approaches to investigate the urgent concerns of contemporary Russia, questioning authority, and shattering the old rules. Canada's Old Trout Puppet Workshop comes to Woolly in December with Famous Puppet Death Scenes about a hapless parade of characters who are captivating, goofy, and helpless against the power of the ultimate overlord-death. Cherokee by Lisa D'Amour-a companion piece of sorts to last year's hit play Detroit-presents two couples whose break from society finds them scrabbling toward a whole new way of life. And the three underdogs in Lights Rise on Grace by Chad Beckim have no choice but to go their own way-societal transgressors due to who they are, who they love, and where they've been.

"This landmark season is a culmination of our thinking over the last few years about what it means to make theatre," says Woolly Artistic Director Howard Shalwitz. "With the expansion of our Company of Artists to include directors, designers, and playwrights, we have been using new processes for production development that harness meaningful and early collaborations among all the artists involved in a production. With our focus on Connectivity, we are asking more probing questions about the relevance of our work in our community. And with scripts like Bootycandy, Mr. Burns, and Stupid Fucking Bird, we have continued to seek out writers who are re-inventing the traditional idea of a play. These three threads have been the biggest influences on my thinking about the direction of Woolly. They have seamlessly combined in Season 35 for our boldest season to date, one which will engage and challenge our audience in new ways."

ABOUT SEASON 35*

"Let them eat cake."
MARIE ANTOINETTE
By David Adjmi
Directed by Yury Urnov
September 15-October 12, 2014

On the surface, Marie Antoinette is the famous story of the rise and fall (mostly fall) of the iconic and controversial Queen of France. But was Marie just a shallow, rich party girl, or a tragic figure constructed by a culture of luxury and celebrity?

"Through David Adjmi's incisive contemporary lens, history's most notorious queen becomes a full-blooded, complex, and tragic heroine who realizes too late that there's an unstoppable revolution brewing outside her window," says Woolly Artistic Director Howard Shalwitz. "This is a Marie Antoinette for today: a potent symbol of all the things that keep us from seeing the real forces bearing down on us: our cult of celebrity, our fatuous politics, and a pace of change we can hardly fathom. I am thrilled to welcome David back to Woolly, along with visionary director Yury Urnov and Woolly Company Member Kimberly Gilbert as Marie."
http://www.broadwayworld.com/washington-dc/article/Woolly-Mammoth-Theatre-Company-Announces-35th-Season-MARIE-ANTOINETTE-CHEROKEE-More-20140210

Une pièce qui remet l'histoire de nos souverains et ses démêlés dans le contexte actuel. Intéressante démarche.

SUNDAY, 2 MARCH 2014
"The Gate of the Year"




This week, my newest play The Gate of the Year is premiering in the Belvoir Players' Studio in south Belfast. The Gate of the Year imagines the events of the French Revolution from a few months before the famous attack on the Bastille fortress until a few days before the fall of the palace in October, as if they had taken place in the modern-day. It focuses on the high court nobility, led by the King's youngest brother the Duke of Artois (played by Belfast actor David Paulin) and his friend, the elegant but manipulative Duchesse de Polignac (played by Rebecca Lenaghan), as they struggle against the growing forces of the revolution. It also contains the storyline of the notorious journalist Jean-Paul Marat (Conor Doran) and the young idealistic republican Charlotte Corday (Nuala Davies).

One of the joys of writing The Gate of the Year after writing the story of the actual events of the French Revolution, The Audacity of Ideas, a few years ago, is to re-imagine the events and personalities to fit with a more modern setting. Marie-Antoinette, played here by the wonderful Emma Taylor who played Imogen in both stage versions of Popular, was seen by many as the inventor of what later came to be called haute couture, by public fascination with her soon turned ugly and in this alternate reality, she becomes the victim of invasive and crushing media attention. Trying to keep the ghosts of Grace Kelly and Princess Diana at bay was tricky, but luckily Marie-Antoinette's own involvement, last-minute, in the politics of the French monarchy meant her story took on a very different hue regardless of her modern-day similarities.

History, I think, has eternal themes and balancing those with the characters of those who lived and died in the 1790s has been a hugely rewarding experience and one of the highlights of any challenge I have faced as a writer thus far. In this world, The Marriage of Figaro controversy becomes about the same-sex marriage debate and Marie-Antoinette complains of the paparazzi, but words like "recession" and "hunger strikers", words that have such an immediate emotional impact on people today, particularly in Northern Ireland, slotted right into the story with surprising ease.


From left-to-right. In rehearsal for The Gate of the Year, Emma Taylor as Queen Marie-Antoinette, David Paulin as the Duke of Artois and Tom Flight as Louis XVI.

The French Revolution casts a long shadow over the two centuries that came after it and perhaps the most surprising thing is not how much needed to be changed but how much could remain the same. The events of The Gate of the Year are very different to the chronology of what happened in 1789 - with modern technology, it was impossible to have Louis XVI (Tom Flight) and Marie-Antoinette's eldest son die of tuberculosis as he did in 1789, here, they are the parents of four surviving children - but at the end of it all, I can't help but think that the feeling of what that euphoric and horrific summer must have been like for the people living through it has remained the same.

The Gate of the Year is open to the public at the Belvoir Players' Studio Theatre in Belfast on Friday 7th March at 8 p.m. and Saturday 8th March at 8 p.m. An industry performance is taking place on Thursday For more information, you can visit the theatre's booking page here. And all media enquiries can contact garethrussell6@gmail.com.
http://garethrussellcidevant.blogspot.be/2014/03/the-gate-of-year.html

Play paints Antoinette in sympathetic light



Richard Isacson, left, and Abbey Platt rehearse a scene for The
Acting Ensemble Stage Company’s production of “Marie
Antoinette: The Color of Flesh” that opens Friday at Studio 217.
(SBT Photo/ANDREW S. HUGHES)


Posted: Thursday, March 27, 2014
By ANDREW S. HUGHES South Bend Tribune

According to the Encyclopædia Britannica, Élisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun painted more than 20 portraits of Marie Antoinette, beginning in 1779.

Her reputation as the queen’s portraitist certainly helped to advance her career but the two women also became friends, a fact that provides the basis for Joel Gross’ “Marie Antoinette: The Color of Flesh,” opening Friday at The Acting Ensemble Stage Company.
“I think it does a really, really beautiful job of depicting two women and how women bond,” Crystal Ryan says about playing Le Brun to Abbey Platt’s Antoinette in the production. “When they start talking, it’s about men. Every girlfriend has had that discussion. The love builds over time. There can be jealousy, but there is that love.”

Although she says Antoinette is a little “narcissistic” and “enjoys being in the royal sphere,” Platt says Gross paints a sympathetic portrait of the queen.

“She desperately wants people to see her as a human being,” she says. “She wants normal friendships, and she struggles with that as a queen, connecting with people who aren’t trying to use her.”

An Austrian by birth and the daughter of the Holy Roman Emperor, Antoinette married the future Louis XVI in an arranged marriage when she was only 15 years old.

“She was born and bred to be a royal consort, so she’s very innocent and naïve about many things,” director Scot Shepley says. “She’s not very worldly, but she does have a presence. She has a magnetism about who she is and what she represents.”

Born in the lower middle class to a father who also painted portraits, Le Brun used her talent to advance financially and socially.
“Élisabeth Le Brun is passionate,” Ryan says about her character. “She’s obsessed as an artist. She’s a professional. She’s driven. But she’s also vulnerable.”

Premiered in 2008, “Marie Antoinette” covers 19 years in the lives of the two women, from 1774 to 1793, and one man, the fictional Count Alexis (Richard Isacson), who has fought on the colonists’ side in the American Revolution and returns to France with sympathies for his nation’s peasants.

“(Gross’) response was that he wanted to create an 18th-century limousine liberal with a heart of gold,” Shepley says about a discussion he and his cast had with the playwright. “(Alexis is) a playboy with revolutionary sympathies. He doesn’t want to get rid of the monarchy, but he wants to see reform.”

He isn’t, however, all politics.

“He’s a rake, in the very traditional sense,” Platt says about Alexis. “He’s cocky. He’s gorgeous. He’s a philanderer, and he makes no excuses. But he’s also very political. And that is what attracts Marie to him.”

Eventually, a love triangle develops between the three characters.

“I think the relationship between Élisabeth and Alexis is one based off this mutually playful sexiness, this instant flirtatiousness,” Shepley says. “The first scene is she’s painting his portrait and he’s trying to seduce her, but she has all the power in painting him. He’s a playboy and he’s thrown by this woman who resists his charms.”

Toward Antoinette, Shepley says, Alexis takes an idealized view.

“He can’t separate the queen and the woman with her,” he says. “Those things are connected for him. It’s almost a spiritual connection, but no less passionate. She’s a pinnacle and embodiment of what France can be. He’s always exhorting her to be the engine of reform.”
After she was cast as Le Brun, Ryan visited the University of Notre Dame’s Snite Museum of Art to view the Le Brun portrait it owns,

“Portrait of Marguerite Baudard de Saint James, Marquise de Puysegur,” from 1786.

“You’re sure it’s going to be good, but you get there, and it’s so huge, which I didn’t expect, and it’s so beautiful,” she says about the painting. “The way she uses color and paints eyes, I just stopped in my tracks. It’s the kind of moment that — it’s the reason I act, I want to tell stories and connect to audiences. Crossing from that reality into theater is something I really, really love.”

Director Scot Shepley also went to view the painting.

“Her paintings have a very relaxed feel to them,” he says. “Her subjects look relaxed as opposed to the stiff, formal portraits of the time. Her last portrait of Marie Antoinette was with her children and it was controversial because it made her look like a mother and not a queen.”
http://www.southbendtribune.com/entertainment/inthebend/eventnews/play-paints-antoinettein-sympathetic-light/article_7f0caa28-b593-11e3-92ed-001a4bcf6878.html

The Colour of Flesh... Un nouvel article sur cette pièce basée sur un improbable triangle amoureux.




BEHIND THE MASK: Jennifer Henry stars as Marie Antoinette in an imagined love triangle between the queen, a social-climbing portrait artist and a two-timing philanderer. (Jasmin Hunter Photography)
http://www.newhampshire.com/article/20140508/NEWHAMPSHIRE01/140509176

http://www.avignonleoff.com/programme/2014/par-titre/m/marie-antoinette-malesherbes-le-dernier-combat-12341/

Retrouvez la pièce "Marie-Antoinette Malesherbes, le dernier combat" au festival d'Avignon à 12h30 à l'Espace Roseau, 8 rue Pétramale

du 5 au 27 juillet 2014

Bonjour et bienvenue sur le Boudoir de Marie-Antoinette Florence C   

La pièce que vous évoquez m'intéresse tout particulièrement, et je regrette beaucoup de ne pouvoir aller au festival d'Avignon cette année   
Par contre si d'autres ont l'occasion de s'y rendre nous restons attentifs aux retours   

Bienvenue dans notre boudoir, Florence C.   

Moi aussi, je voudrais vraiment bien pouvoir assister à cette pièce, mais c'est impossible à cette période...   

Quelques photos de "The Colour of Flesh" à Portland Stage:



Ellen Adair, left, and Caroline Hewitt in a scene from “Marie Antoinette: The Color of Flesh” at Portland Stage. Mark Rockwood photos courtesy of Portland Stage Company



Ellen Adair, Caroline Hewitt and Tony Roach in "Marie Antoinette: The Color of Flesh" at Portland Stage. Mark Rockwood photo courtesy of Portland Stage Company
http://www.pressherald.com/2012/05/03/artist-in-residence_2012-05-03/

Bonjour,

Je n'ai jamais entendu parler de cette pièce que dans le Boudoir. N'a-t-elle jamais été montée en France ?

madame antoine

Elle va être montée à Fort Lauderdale.
http://www.sunny.org/includes/calendar-of-events/Marie-Antoinette-The-Color-of-Flesh---A-Staged-Reading/19537/?e_pageNum=1&startrow=1&anchornum=10

Merci pour cette information, Monsieur Lauzun. Révérence de cour.